Breaking the Law

By Roger Colins

Rule Of Law: 
Optional Extra or just harder to get caught?

Has the world suddenly gotten just a little too hard to do the right thing, or a too easy to do the wrong thing? All the top guys in power and money all seem to be losing their faith in honesty. Maybe they aren't enough lawyers or too many but either way, everyone, everywhere is tearing up the law and playing their own game.

Three points strike me immediately, and one other, I found just this morning.

On Saturday, Hans Michelbach claimed that the European Central Bank's Mario Draghi has decided to break a treaty by buying useless bonds from Cyprus and Greece. Austria and its Chancellor Werner Faymann will sue the European Commission (in the European Court of Justice) if green energy subsidies are given the green light to build Nuclear power plants, which France's EDF are attempting to do in Hinckley Point, UK.

And of course, The People's Communist Party in China are ignoring their own laws. The bit of paper where it says Hong Kong can vote its own people in and enjoy trouble free protests for fifty years, apparently lost somewhere in Beijing and the PCP, forgotten what it said.

Another bit of news,

Samsung have apparently paid what they owe to Microsoft, but diligently failed to pay the interest as if to make a statement 'the law doesn't apply to me' or 'I know better, so I'm going to personally amend the rules.' If that weren't bad enough, there's those reneging on their own words, and not just those laid out by a judge. Some might say that's not as bad but for others, it's worse.

Right honourable David Cameron PM, vowing his Scottish referendum winners some newly devolved power, failed to mention he'd want some back from Scotland should the Union remain intact. Hardly breaking the law, but as blatantly dishonest as one can get without being thrown in prison. Either there's an element of lacking self respect to stick to ones own word, a presence of self denial or schizophrenia where the original agreement was, a mistake or accident the perpetrator was unaware of. Perhaps it's just that as time goes along, people tend to just change their minds out of the blue and of course, there's also pre-meditative, deliberate untruth.

Will the law ever catch up with any of these forgetful word-smiths and 'alleged' criminals? Somehow I highly doubt it. With a world wide consensus, something along the lines of 'If everyone's doing it, it's okay.' or 'I've got enough money for some really good lawyers / judges.' then the biggest scoundrels just grow bigger balls. Somehow, somewhere, an example needs to be made before this sort of thing truly gets out of anyone's control.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say all of these are just a brand new way to launder money through the courts, everyone's beginning to catch on and board the gravy train.

Ruling Power

By Roger Colins

The House of Commons in session

It's always a point of controversy to discuss war, religion, sex or politics. Controversial because these are all very much a personal point of view and disagreeing with a persons belief displays a rather callous disposition and assumes that one person, put simply, claims to know better than the other.

Of course, we don't know any better. The lot of us are crawling around blind just trying to do the best we can, the best way we know how.

A person can't really be judged a lesser being by anyone else because when it comes down to it, any one of us could be right. Dogs have their good and bad points the same as cats but which is overall 'a better pet'? We just can't be sure.

Democracy comes from the ancient Greek word demos 'of the people'. Curiously, communism has a remarkably similar definition being 'owned by the people'.

This being so, one can't help but wonder how the two found themselves in such opposition.

Communism without it's historical application is quite the excellent idea. So is democracy. National socialism works very well and monarchy, should it be genuinely benevolent, would be highly popular. It seems governance has just gotten stuck in history.


Power Play

Perhaps it has something to do with power. The adage goes that absolute power corrupts, absolute. Does it apply?

It would if you include dictatorship but not when these particular instances are designed to spread the attributes of power over a wide area.

Vladimir Putin. President of Russia

Lust for power, then. A person that finds himself in power may only want more.

The limits to their success may only depend on the limits to their morals and should this person discover that he has none, he or she could very well develop a messiah complex.

The concept of democracy differs somewhat from the rest in only one particular and that is corruption.

Any other system has a lot more holes that beg for exploitation. The lustful immoral are drawn in like moths to the flame.

Leaving consensus aside, democracy is still the most corrupt-proof government we have to work with and yet these holes keep cropping up.

Back handers, bribes, quid pro quo and back scratching constitute the epicentre for corruption, especially in a democracy. Politicians are looking for votes and will sell their mothers to appease as much of the electorate as humanly possibly.


By Design

Barack Obama. President of the United States of America

There is also the issue of funding and this is predominant across all government types.

A candidate has to publicise his entry, gain support from his party, present his policies and spread the word.

In order to do this the media is enlisted to help out and the only way to create more publicity than your opponent is to shovel the most amount of money at the media.

Does that mean the candidate willing to impart the most money will win? Certainly seems that way.

Votes are there to give the most practicable forum for opinion. Buying votes if rife in many democratic states globally but it is still down to the individual should the electorate give up his free will for a few pennies more because the practise has become established, part and parcel with how the country decides who gets to take over next.

The very existence of any government's infrastructure including anarchy, shows that there is a vested interest in how things should or should not be done. How things should be done has to lie in the hands of the people, even if it is anarchy.

Hierarchy of representatives from local council all the way up to the cabinet allows a conduit of communication from the people to the person. Representative, is a choice word.


A Civilian Servant

Politician or advocate, leader or reformist, lunatic or genius; when they stand at the front and commence parley that person represents those that gave over the responsibility. There is another name for this station.

David Cameron. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

A servant.

Should that person digress from such position to express and relay the thoughts, feelings and desires of his or her constituency, they are no longer representative of the people they claim to speak for.

Suggesting that a representative has no personal interest what-so-ever is quite at odds to the allure of power.

Finding a person that has no interest in power to serve as one's representative may seem daunting but there is a final point to be made.

If said person has a proven track record of service to his or her country then they would not refuse the honour, they could not or it would go against all that they have previously sought out and accomplished.

#power #government #ethics

Smoke

By Roger Colins

______________________________________________________________ We make it, we breathe it, see it and smell it but there's more to smoke than meets the eye. One constituent of smoke is what set off some of our greatest thinkers in history. The coolest thing I ever knew about smoke was something called Brownian motion named after, Robert Brown. Principal discoverer of how a fluid particle flies about with completely random velocity and vector. Einstein backed this up in a paper on a different subject and Jean Perrin followed up on that with one of his own. Both won Nobel prizes for these works. Any one particle displays this random behaviour, simply due to bumping into other surrounding particles when liquid or gas. The different directions and forces of all the crazy snicker snickering results in any one particle showing of, near as dammit, proper randomness. Smoke is a great example. 5 particles (in yellow) display Brownian motion Anything that isn't solid will do the trick but we can probably see it more clearly in a cloud of smoke. You will of course need an electron microscope to actually, kind of see it but for just being able to recognise what's going on, smoke definitely works well. Smoke is made up of all the constituent elements that took part in the original combustion. Combustion usually needs oxygen to bond with so you'll get a lot of oxides. The ash you see are mostly metal oxides but of course it depends what you're burning and how hot you're burning it. One tree might leave quite a bit of calcium carbonate in it's ash while another may be nearly all calcium oxide and if you want just carbon, you heat your wood without oxygen. Smoke or Shoot For all the smokers out there, you'll know that the lit cigarette gives off plumes of blue smoke and after respiring, it turns white. Anything small enough to be soaked up by the blood cells get into the body along with everything small enough to get out, carbon dioxide for example. Depending on your tipple, there's probably only one active element that we're looking for in a puff. Smoking must have been one of our all time favourite pastimes since we discovered fire and we must have tried everything before we found the really good stuff. Nowadays all the fun has been sucked out of it thanks to needles. Suffice to say one gets exactly the same effect whether smoking it, shooting up or chowing down. They're just all different ways to get the thing in the blood. Injection only works with powder. So why smoke over shoot? We're all well aware tobacco being the most commonly smoked product in history. The second is probably opium. Only quite recently was it decided opiates should be banned and though common in Victorian London, the product was not as readily available nor entirely socially accepted. It has of course thrived for centuries in the Far East and spread worldwide in the form of pipes, drips, pills, powders of morphine, herion, codine, oxycodone all with their own alkaloid, strength and delivery method from the poppy. After that, things get fuzzy. You can of course smoke anything that burns, and everything burns, if you add enough heat but here is another chemical we have enjoyed from the benefit of chemists and dealers alike. Methamphetamine is highly popular today, more so than any other active property in recent memory. It is also most commonly smoked to achieve the most satisfactory results however, here we come upon an anomaly. Heroin is traditionally injected whereas it's opium counterpart, usually smoked. Looking at it one way, Heroin or diamorphine is a purer concoction from opium and morphine a purer concoction from heroin so why is one smoked while the others injected? Opium is not refined enough to inject but the others are. So what about methamphetamine? It's the hit. As previously mentioned, the effects of any drug are the same but the net strength depends on purity, delivery and resistance. Addicts are well known to overdose on herion more than any other drug, simply thanks to a lack of resistance over time and the choice method of delivery being one big shot. While less common, it is just as easy to inject methamphetamine as it is heroin. Choosing to shoot up over smoking seems a balance of probability because one chemical is that much more immediate where the other is the same. Given the choice, you'd probably prefer to smoke something instead of dig around for a vein. The King of Smoke Marijuana can be argued as more popular than the rest of our smoking products as well as the most medicinally beneficial. Tobacco just happens to be legal but the active tetra hydro cannabinol in marijuana would probably outsell nicotine ten to one should laws switch tomorrow. Colorado has legalised bits of it, Holland has been smoking it, and everything else for a while now and of course the Caribbean wouldn't be the same without the stuff. Coming in all different shapes and sizes from the home grown plant to new hybrids, we can safely say that out of all the outlawed chemicals we chose to smoke, weed wins. The most popular smoke of all Somewhere, someone published a paper on the psychedelic effects of marajuana but I'm having trouble finding their work. Never the less, I can briefly recite that a study of Scandinavian origin claimed that prolonged abuse resulted in mental illnesses including but not exclusive to, schizophrenia. I can agree that if you feed the wrong person enough of any chemical he will surly lose his mind but can base no experience of my own or those I have known that could tally with such a finding except, that all the schizophrenics I have met, all smoked weed. Benefits? I also lost an alternative article on the rates of lung cancer in non smokers from about six years ago. The article claiming, that roughly half of all those undergoing lung cancer treatment in the UK were non smokers. Not to say there are no cancer causing properties in cigarettes, I just wouldn't mind a second look at the article. Bearing in mind the different potencies of different tobaccos, there are on average 69 severely toxic chemicals known to cause cancer. These are of course, trace elements out of a list of over four thousand, none of which are particularly friendly but that does not necessarily mean they can't be useful. When we're in the hospital dying of cancer and addicted to morphine, all is well so long as we remember it's addictive. Tobacco is an anti inflammatory and good for irritable bowel syndrome, lowers the chances of getting Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and all kinds of allergies. Medicinal benefits exist in nearly everything, just as the risk of death does also. Smoke currently has a nasty stigma around it. In the UK we've just passed law banning new electronic cigarettes to under 18's and decided not to ban the adverts, in the hope to convert more adults to non smokers than teenagers to smokers, so far as I understand the theory. Either way, it's polluting the environment, annoying people with touchy noses and so on. It was not that long ago when smoking was taboo if one chose not to light up, that we had dedicated rooms to do it in and if I am right, smokers have always been very considerate. There will be the occasional fat cat that likes to annoy an entire restaurant with his Cohiba but on the whole, there wasn't much of a fuss when asked to smoke outside, even though it seemed quite a cruel thing to do. Perhaps there isn't much space left and the olden days are far behind us. Our future is very much ahead of us however and smoking will be with us for many years to come so maybe, one day, we can have our smoking rooms back.

smoke smoking chemistry

Contradiction with Terms

By Roger Colins 

___________________________________________________________ Contradiction. If you don't already know what it is; contra|dic¦tion Pronunciation: /kɒntrəˈdɪkʃ(ə)n 1. a combination of statements, ideas, or features which are opposed to one another: 'the proposed new system suffers from a set of internal contradictions' 2. a situation in which inconsistent elements are present: 'the paradox of using force to overcome force is a real contradiction' 3. [mass noun] 'the statement of a position opposite to one already made: 'the second sentence appears to be in flat contradiction of the first'     [count noun]: 'the experiment provides a contradiction of the hypothesis' (Courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary) Normally, when we come across contradiction there is one of two choices. First is most obvious. The contradiction is erroneous and false, we do away with it immediately. The next option is to read between the lines and divine the underlying conflict that's been illustrated by use of simplification with two opposing factors in order to evoke, incite or elicit a specific cognitive equation. The solution is down to you. It is possible we have been remiss. It's always possible. There is a third option and the reader should allow a moment to guess at this point, whilst a clue is hidden in plain sight. The third choice you didn't see is halfway between the first two options and the holding ground for literalism. To contradict. The effect of literal contradiction is neither sarcastic nor ironic but that of both, neither and one. Firstly, literal contradiction possesses two elements in opposition as would any, whether ironic or sarcastic. 'He's on fire and yet so cool.' - All contradictions must always delineate opposition. Next. Literal contradiction will not be sarcastic or ironic. In order to achieve sarcasm there has to be double entendre; two meanings, and in order to achieve irony, a third. Therefore our literal connotation arrives at one. Contradiction is not three nor two but one meaning. The contradictory statement is not contradictory; hence, literal contradiction. If there are any more than three positively identifiable connotations, we venture into the realm of wit. Irony and sarcasm can of course be witty, but having numerically counted the references of each we have no other choice but to assign their appropriate value. All together now and in descending order, wit, irony, sarcasm, contradiction and statement. Let's attack it from the reverse angle. A statement can only have one possible outcome. If it has any others then it loses it's lethargy. 'The black cat has a white tail.' No real room to manoeuvre. Sarcasm more often crops up in spoken language thanks to insinuative pitch and timing, not that it cannot be found in literature but only that it is difficult to replicate without expert timing and flawless context. Two meanings appear to be much harder than one or three and most certainly, more difficult than our literature flooded, wit. Life or Death The beauty, if you can call it that, of contradiction is that it can disguise itself as any one of the others. If it looks clever, then surely it must be. Wrong. Contradictions by their very nature spark off a ream of purposeless dreaming without end and this is nearly always mistaken for something truly valuable. If something is witty then it says one thing in many ways. If something is ironic, it says it in two ways to get a third and if something is is sarcastic it says it one way to get two. A statement is of course one to get one. Mistakes can mean life or death.  Why do we chance it? Now, if you were passing on life or death  information. Do you really think you would use anything except a pure, unadulterated statement? 'Stop!' or would you try 'Red lights usually mean Go, don't they?' perhaps 'Strange, a traffic light on a straight road?' and if you're ever so quick you could venture 'They're going to swap green for red one of these days.' Am I Dreaming? At the very same time, have you ever come across fictional literature that used only statements? If so, I bet you put the thing back down and carefully nudged it away with a stick. That previous sentence may well have been sarcastic but if so, can you get any more than two definitive meanings out of it? The book was bad. The book was so bad I treated it as if it were diseased. There any deeper meaning? No. If it were contradictory then you could get a million, should you so waste your time waddling around in your own head. It will make you think, sure, but what are you thinking about? Everything and nothing. Your mind is watching a tennis match without score and the whole exercise, mental masturbation. It feels good but shrouds the truth of the matter because it looked so much more damn puzzling than anything you'd ever seen before, sending you off to eternity. We humans love puzzles but remember, we turn rage frightful when led down a road without solution. Stare at a white wall, summon up everything in existence that has to do with wall or white or sight. You can start with the first letter 'W' and count off every word beginning with that. This is contradiction. If there is absolutely no definite, singular imperative to any one string of words then this is instigation to dream, and arrive at your own conclusions. Arrive ye shall and attribute thine newly found wisdom to that one contradiction as if it were genius when it was nothing more than another man dreaming. Not as easy as it seems Take a long, hard, look at the title of this post and decide for yourself if it is a statement, sarcastic, ironic, wit or contradiction. I have not given a full example of literal contradiction thus far. Only now shall I grant a handful. My only suggestion is that you count the ways they can be interpreted. These are but the simplest examples I could find and still, I leave you to decide for yourself. That is all. 'One has to be cruel to be kind' 'People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid' 'Facts are the enemy of truth' 'Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance' 'When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you' 'Wit is educated insolence' 'It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid' 'Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same' 'Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you' 'The spiritual man makes judgements about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgement'

contradiction literature definition

Subliminal Messaging

By Roger Colins

Spot anything other than Ned? Subliminal messaging seeds thoughts and ideas in the back of our heads without our conscious awareness.  Negatives are a prime example of this effect. The brain doesn't hear negatives. If told not to think of a green house, you'll immediately think of one. Most commonly, the trick is used in advertising, marketing and sales. Subliminal messaging is essentially a form of hypnosis as the victim's will is being toyed with. Here's a short example. __________________________________________________________ 'If it were the right price, you'd buy it, wouldn't you?' tag question. No one can answer no, so 'Yes' 'You have the paint range selected personally by you.' customer nods in understanding, not agreement. 'After we send it to the factory you can have it in about three weeks.' nods again 'So, when can we make the appointment?' Close. The salesman has already made you say yes, then, makes you think of something unrelated. This is in order to distract for a moment while you try to connect his first line to the next. You know you said yes but to what, you can't remember any more. There is no connection and he has managed to confuse, just for a second. Lastly, while you're listening and thinking, the salesman jumps you with an assumption, once again cutting off your thought process. You're on the spot, don't want to disappoint the lovely man and just settle for agreeing to the sale. The 'Yes' was the subliminal message and how it works are the connections to it. As far as the top name brands are concerned they just want to remind you that they are still the best. Coca Cola, Nike, Apple all bombard the general public with slogans and labels. Although we will look, we not think about it. The image is just there to reinforce their grip on the market. Subliminal messaging is more subtle. In addition to the logo flashing across a screen, they throw in a clip of your favourite pop music to make it more appealing. This tells you that they have the same taste as you in music even if you don't have the same taste in drinks, trainers or computers. Subliminal messaging can more subtle than even that. I like to think of it as liminal messaging. This trick here is to encourage actively conscious thought on the subject matter. Take 'The Wolf of Wall Street'. Scorsese is well known for cinematic violence and his movies have an attractive quality because of it. He has however done movies without violence but even though they are just as good if not better, they have not done as well at the box office than those with the trademark blood and swearing. More than that, after having walked out of a movie jam packed with more swear words than any other in living memory, can you honestly say you will swear less after having watched it? Monkey see, monkey do and if we are not careful about looking out for the tell tale signs of subliminal messaging then we have no defence against it and soak up every last bit of it. Positives, negatives, blunt and subtle. The news and media are no different. They learnt this trick by sheer accident and now it's used as the gold standard. Instead of trying to cover up a scandal or ignore a humanitarian catastrophe it is simply easier and more effective to report on it and every other to saturate our expectations. If a nuclear bomb were dropped on China, seven nuclear bombs say, there would be world war. Imagine there were no scandalous reports in the current day media and had not been for a number of years. Along comes a nuclear bomb of presidential assassination or phone hacking or sexual assault, there world be the media equivalent to world war. No one would put up with it. As the media is now a soapbox for everyone's worst sins, we put up with it because it appears to be the norm, accept that because it is being reported someone else is going to do something about it and are resolved that it is not our problem. If China were hit with actual, nuclear bombs, I do not believe people would let it slide unless everyone were being hit with them too. Subliminal messaging is clever but not as clever as an on-the-nose-double-blind. It's fun, entertaining and just like a Martin Scorsese movie.

subliminal_messaging hypnotism media

Modern Pirates

By Roger Colins

___________________________________________________________ The Jolly Roger I cheat, I'll admit it. I'm even going to tell you how not to do it but first, a quick note on the ethics involved. I'll come back to a fuller examination on morality and ethics some other time but for now, let's stick to cheating. Guy Fawkes Mask Pirates are cool. They strike the Jolly Roger, offer a chance for surrender and plunder treasure without a care in the world for who's getting the pointy end of the stick. Aside from the seafaring pirates that still hound the horn of Africa to Madagascar, modern day pirates also operate on the internet. Screeners, ripped music and DVD's, even movies sneaked out of Hollywood before the blue screen has been filled in, are all outlawed. These, pirates have more in kind with Robin Hood than Jack Sparrow. They risk their well being not for themselves but to share their ill gotten gains with the entire planet, free of charge. The bad guys are supposed to be cool or they wouldn't make very good, bad guys but even pirates are supposed to abide by the pirate code! Privateer If you own an Android powered device, you're already a cheat. Really? Android is based on Linux open source software. Completely free and run by volunteers, no different than a charity shop. The competition, we know who you are, all secretly consider Linux distributions, cheaters. What is inside Android? Android, Ubuntu, Mint, Red Hat, Debian, Fedora, the new Steam, Gentoo, openSUSE and Chrome, yes Chrome too is Linux based source code. Have a look here for an idea of some of the rest. 'Why haven't I heard of these?' you might ask. First of all, Linux is primarily the developer's tool to build other software. Some of you may already be aware of this. As you can see, Chrome is Google's flagship browser. Chrome was built on Chromium and Chromium built with Gentoo, one of the skinniest operating systems ever made. It'll fit quite easily on any thumb drive. Unless you're a developer, you probably won't have heard of most of these. Second, it's free. Open source means that anyone can play with the source code to fix bugs, adjust, tweak and arrange any program to get things working the way you want. Since it is free, there's no point in advertising or marketing it, at all. Lastly, everyone's scared of Linux and quite rightly so. It is powerful. Any android phone or tablet can be 'rooted' which is to simply unlock the safeguards so you can start playing with the source code and turn it into a refrigerator, should you so wish. Pirates! Java has become integral Google had a problem, quite recently because the developers used Java to stick the Android programs together without telling anyone. Naughty. The commercial software you pay for seem to provide a very poor service. They are, user friendly with great design, crisp graphics and clever apps all brought together to provide a hassle free experience at a reasonable price. How many times did your operating system stall or crash last week? Mine hasn't, ever. Why? Because I have a community of crackers (hackers) building mine. Genuinely motived, they don't waste time with big business and are only interested in the best. Survival of the fittest sounds like something that only happens to wild animals and homo sapiens, but were are still homo sapiens and survival of the fittest is still very much alive and well, if not more so than ever before. I cannot and will not, ever, endorse theft, robbery or fraud. Unless you are starving. If you are starving, I will not only endorse but actively encourage. Taking advantage of others is deplorable but taking advantage of those, taking advantage of you is beating them at their own game. It is up to you to decide who is taking advantage of you and who is trying to make life more convenient. Buccaneers Here's what not to do if you still don't want to cheat. Don't, download and install Firefox nor, these add-ons for the browser - Adblock Plus, Adblock Plus Pop-up Addon, Adblock Element Hiding helper, BetterPrivacy, DoNotTrackMe, Firefox Ad killer, Ghostery, Self Destructing Cookies, Skipscreen or WOT - because they will kill the advertising community, stop the big companies tracking your every move and make it near impossible for them to market new products or inform the general public about new deals, discounts about the latest top brand name products for you to buy, on the internet at least. WOT will however keep you safe from known malware. Don't follow this link, or follow the 7 steps about 'pipelining' to speed up your internet that will take less than a minute to do. Last of all, whatever you do, don't visit watchseries, vodly or movie4k. They all keep changing their URL's and suck money out from under the already poor and ailing production companies. If they go under, there'll be no more TV shows or movies for anyone. The Linux Penguin You can however, go to Linux, download and install Ubuntu, Mint or openSUSE right alongside your current operating system but beware, even though it is worth it, it will take time to do and you'll have to learn one or two new things and, you'll still be cheating!

pirates cheating how not to  linux